double feature

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A poster advertising a double feature of Die, Monster, Die! and Planet of the Vampires.

The double feature, also known as a double bill, was a motion picture industry phenomenon in which theatre managers would exhibit two films for the price of one, supplanting an earlier format in which one feature film and various short subject reels would be shown.

(In a modern^[vague] context, a double bill refers to an airing of a television program in which two episodes are shown consecutively.)

Origin and format

Movie theaters, interested in attracting customers during the Great Depression, began changing the way they booked movies. In the 1920s, before the Depression and the advent of sound film, an evening at the cinema would often consist of the following:

• One or more live acts
• An animated cartoon short subject
• One or more live-action comedy shorts (e.g., Our Gang, Laurel and Hardy, or The Three Stooges)
• One or more novelty shorts: a musical, a travelogue, etc.
• A newsreel
• The main feature film

Theater owners decided that they could both attract more customers and save on costs if they offered two movies for the price of one. In the typical 1930s double bill, the screening began with a variety program consisting of trailers, a newsreel, a cartoon and/or a short film preceding a low-budget second feature (the B movie), followed by a short interlude. Afterward, the high-budget main feature (the A movie) ran. Although the double feature put many short comedy producers out of business, it was the primary source of revenue for smaller Hollywood studios, such as Republic and Monogram, that specialized in B movie production.

Decline

The double feature arose partly because of a studio practice known as "block booking," a form of tying in which major Hollywood studios required theaters to buy B-movies along with the more desirable A-movies. The U.S. Supreme Court decided that this practice was illegal in United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc. in 1948, contributing to the end of the studio system.

However, many smaller or independent cinemas especially drive-in theatres sought double features to bring in more patronage. Sometimes a film would be accompanied by a re-release, otherwise a smaller studio may have been contracted to bring in a low budget second feature. James H. Nicholson and Samuel Z. Arkoff formed their American International Pictures with the idea of providing a double feature of two B pictures for often less than the price of a single A feature, or taking a lower percentage of the cinema's grosses than the major studios.^[1]

By the 1960s, double features had been mostly abandoned in non–drive-ins in favor of the modern single-feature screening, in which only one feature film is exhibited. However, double bills of popular series that had previously been run as a single feature such as the James Bond and Matt Helm superspy genre and The Man With No Name and The Stranger spaghetti westerns were re-released together.

However, in the suburb of St Kilda in Melbourne, Australia a cinema known as The Astor Theatre has maintained the tradition of the Double Feature almost every-day from its establishment in 1936 to this day. Each double bill costs the price of one normal film, beginning daily at 7:30 PM, with 20 minute intermissions between features.

Short films still occasionally precede the feature presentation (Pixar films generally feature a short, for example), but the double feature is now effectively extinct in first-run movie theaters in the U.S.

Following the success of Who Framed Roger Rabbit, three Roger Rabbit cartoon shorts were created to be shown as preludes to other Disney films, in an effort to revive the viewing of cartoon shorts before major films. Only three were made and the scheme failed.

Many repertory houses continue to show two films, usually related in some way, back to back.

During the 1990s, many VHS cassettes that showed two films on the same tape (the second was often a sequel to the first film) were self-named as "double features."

In 2007, filmmakers Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez released their individual films Planet Terror and Death Proof as a double feature under the title Grindhouse, edited together with fake exploitation film trailers and 1970s-era snipes in order to replicate the experience of viewing a double feature in a "grindhouse" theater. Although Grindhouse received critical acclaim, it was a complete financial flop in the United States. The films were screened individually in international markets and on DVD.

The most recent double feature was of the re-release of Who? and Sons of Soul by Tony! Toni! Toné! that started July 31, 2007.

Another recent double feature was the Duel Project, when Japanese directors Ryuhei Kitamura and Yukihiko Tsutsumi created competing films to be shown and voted on by the premier audience.

The most recent double feature was of the re-release of Toy Story and Toy Story 2 that started October 2nd, 2009. Both films were in Disney Digital 3D in select movie theaters.

References